| > On the other hand, people really have to think rationally and responsibly to tackle serious political issues. While I agree with that, the limitation to that approach is that the rational part of the mind is not in control - it can at best guide emotion. Daniel Kahneman has a great metaphor for this: think of the rational aspect of the mind as the rider of an elephant, and the emotional, intuitive part as this elephant[0]. Sure, under most circumstances the rider can guide the elephant, but the elephant can want different things than the rider. In a way the elephant is more important, because if it doesn't work along the rider is helpless. You need to get the elephants to calm down and get along before it's riders can even bother with having a conversation. [0] Ignoring for a moment the issues with clear-cut boundaries like that, or the limitations of making sense of the mind in terms of two other minds. EDIT: I left a comment earlier on reddit[1] that indirectly talks about this as well: You have to realize he's not trying to reach out to people like you who already are aware of these issues and agree that something has to be done. He's trying to get the point across to people who are most likely to resist thinking about it, for all the wrong but understandable reasons. Like with race, climate change, gender issues, religion, those who need this stuff to be explained to the most are also the most likely to resist, because they literally Can't Deal With It. It's called fragility[2]: “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include outward display of emotions such as anger, fear and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence and leaving the stress-inducing situation.” Replace "racial" in that quote with any sensitive issue you want, like "gender", "political" or "religious". Everyone has this to some degree, and the first thing to do if you want to have a healthy debate is become aware of everyone's point of fragility and somehow circumvent it so we can have a reasonable discussion. Even more so when trying to reach out to the people who suffer from this the most. It is really important we keep trying to do that, no matter how frustrating it can get, because the ignorance of even a few affects everyone in society, especially in a democracy. It's a real problem and John Oliver even lampshades it, calling Snowden the IT guy in the office you don't want to learn from. He may appear to be shooting Snowden down, but what he's doing is approaching this from point of view of the many people with this mindset. He's acknowledging their experience (not to be confused with viewpoint) as a valid one, and trying to give them a way to connect to the topic regardless, with jokes and dick pics. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/31lqjh/edward_sno... [2] http://www.alternet.org/culture/why-white-people-freak-out-w... |